1965 Ford Mustang Sculptures Created By Artist Robin Bark

Only 500 Aluminum-Cast Sculptures To Be Produced

Amie WilliamsAssociate Online Editor

May 13, 2014

The 50th Mustang Birthday Celebration continues on, and this time it is diving into the fine arts. Robin Bark, based out of the United Kingdom, now has the official Ford Motor Company license to create 500 limited-edition 1965 Ford Mustang fastback sculptures in celebration of the Mustang’s 50th birthday.

With just 500 to be made, they are cast in solid aluminum, polished, numbered and signed by the artist.

Bark has plenty of experience meddling in the fine arts having worked in industrial design, graphic design ceramics and metalwork. Now he can mix his fantastic artwork ability with his passion for cars.

“I think I was drawing cars the moment I was born,” said Bark. “Growing up in South Africa, I wanted to design cars, but there wasn’t much call for it, so I switched from industrial design to graphics, which took me into advertising for a time.”

Being an art teacher in the United Kingdom, he experimented with new mediums including metal casting and graduated on to cast-aluminum sculptures of motorbikes and sports cars. As talented as Bark is, the Mustang proved to be a challenge due to its unique shape, and is Bark’s first time creating an American car.

Bark starts the project off with a wide array of photos of the 1965 Ford Mustang which then leads to roughly sketched engineered drawings that ultimately end up as the aluminum sculpture that you see.

“Mustang is a very different shape from the earlier cars I had done, which were more classically streamlined,” he said. “I look for what the designers were trying to achieve with shapes, and try to capture the essence of the car while also imparting a sense of motion to a static object.”

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“From the shark-bite nose to the long, sweeping line of the fastback roof to the tri-bar taillamps, Mustang has a quintessential profile that makes it easily recognizable to everyone on the road,” said Moray Callum, Ford vice president, global design. “Robin Bark has captured the essential nature of one of the greatest Mustangs in his sculpture, creating an object of art that appears to be fluid motion.”

The resin model of the 1965 Ford Mustang is sent off to a specialist casting pattern maker. Since Bark works with traditional foundry based out of Guildford, U.K., it can only produce just ten raw aluminum castings at a time. The foundry makes these unique castings as well as creates reproduction parts for vintage race cars including cylinder heads and gearbox casings for grand prix race cars from the 1930s.

These castings are each polished and when finished, the 1965 Ford Mustang aluminum sculptures come signed and numbered by Bark who then meticulously places them in a wooden decorative box.

Bark’s 1965 Ford Mustang aluminum prototype proved a huge hit at Mustang clubs and events across France and the United Kingdom where enthusiasts placed orders for these unique Mustang sculptures.